Facilitating higher education mobility for the future views from Japanese context

1. Facilitating higher education mobility for the futureviews from Japanese context Akiyoshi Yonezawa CAHE, Tohoku University

2. Japan in a global policy context • Abe (2006-2007): maintain a leading position in Asia by opening up Japanese society • ‘Internationalization of Japanese HE’ became one of top policy agenda • Fukuda (2007-2008) : Education as a diplomatic tool • Plan for inviting 300,000 international students • Global 30: select 30 universities for supporting internationalization • Proposal of Asian ‘ERASMUS’ • Aso (2008- ): Aiming to take a leadership for tackling with Economic Crisis • Central Council for Education (Advisory Council for MEXT) starts discussion on roadmap for improving global competitiveness and internationalization of HE

3. Japanese HE and Globalization • Highly privatized international student market • 80 to 90 % of international students are technically self-financed • Relying on the over-demand in neighboring countries, and over-supply in home HE market • Internationalization in two arenas (Global/domestic: Teichler 1999) • Non-English speaking but substantially large • Demographic pressure both in society as a whole • Low birth rate, decreasing youth population, aging (Yonezawa & Kim 2008) • Retirement of first baby boomers and unpopularity of engineering profession among youngsters • Rapid growth and internationalization of neighboring countries • Limited scholarships for studying abroad by home students

4. Number and Share of International Students in Japan (2006)

5. Two types of approaches for internationalization • (mainly national universities): strengthen the research capacities to internationally competitive levels: but relying on domestic grants (international reviews becoming common) • (mainly private universities): improve the quality of education to meet international standards: quality assurance including foreign accreditation, benchmarking etc.

6. Profile of Top 200 Japanese Universities (QS/THES 2008)

8. Classes taught in English • Bachelor programs • 0%: 29.1% (national: 16.7%, private: 31.6%) • 10% or more: 18.5% (n: 8.3%, p: 19.8%) • Master programs • 0%: 58.1% (n: 23.3%, p: 67.8%) • 10% or more: 9.5% (n: 23.3%, p: 6.8%) • Doctorate programs • 0%: 66.5% (n: 25.9%, p: 76.3%) • 10% or more: 10.3% (n: 25.9%, p: 7.1%)

9. Internationalization & Finance

10. Linkage with labor market: • Recruitment fit for long-term employment in a homogeneous culture by Japanese firms • Job hunting long before graduation with time-consuming selection process • In-house promotion linked with seniority based salary scheme: unattractive for non-Japanese white-collar workers and high-skilled professionals • Lack of career path to be a leader capable for managing multi-national enterprises

11. Salary increase of MBA holder (Kato 2003)

12. Facilitating higher education mobility for the future in Japanese context • Mismatch between policy vision for ‘a global leader’ and reality in HE far from cosmopolitan environment • Different agenda are dealt with in a single word • Research is stressed at national universities, while curriculum/teaching is put importance at private universities • Hierarchies: majorities are relatively domestic or local • Danger: Internationalization of HE will become a dead letter? • Manipulation for achieving an ambitious goals: Redefinition of ‘international students’, discussion for developing Japanese original ‘world university rankings’ • Internationalization through internal resources • Lack of regional-level funds to rely on, no market competitiveness in English-based education services • Need for structural change of Japanese society as a whole

13. Merci bien!